Electric vehicles (“EV”) and hybrid electric vehicles (“HEV”) employ power electronics devices which generate significant amounts of heat energy. This heat energy must be dissipated to avoid excessive heating of these devices, which could lead to damage or reduced performance.
Automotive power electronics devices typically include one or more heat-generating electronic components such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, field effect transistors (FETS), isolated gate bipolar transistors (IBGTs), power inverters, DC to DC converters and DC to AC converters. These components may be mounted on a substrate such as a printed circuit board.
Although the structure of automotive power electronics devices is variable, the power electronic devices in some applications are provided with opposed planar faces along which cooling can be effected. IGBTs are an example of power electronic devices which may have this structure. Such devices can be cooled by contacting one or both of the opposed planar faces of the device with a heat sink. In order to maximize thermal contact with the planar face of the power electronic device, the heat sink has a planar surface along which it contacts the power electronic device, and a thin layer of thermal interface material (TIM) may be provided between the heat sink and the planar face of the power electronic device. To enhance heat transfer, a cooling fluid such as air or a liquid coolant may be circulated along the surface of the heat sink which is opposite to the surface in contact with the power electronics device.
An example of a cooling arrangement for power electronics devices is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,295,433 B2 to Taylor et al. In accordance with this patent, an electronics assembly is provided in which a plurality of electronics packages are mounted on a circuit board, with the opposed side surfaces of the electronics packages being in thermal contact with a first heat sink device and a second heat sink device, each of the heat sink devices having a fluid flow passage for circulation of a cooling fluid. The assembly disclosed by Taylor et al. is held together by clamps, with the electronics packages and circuit board being sandwiched between the heat sink devices. A similar arrangement for two-sided cooling of power electronics devices is disclosed in US Publication No. 2015/0171578 A1 to Taylor et al.
While the above-described structures are useful for cooling power electronics devices in which the components have a co-planar arrangement, they may not be useful for other arrangements, as when a plurality of components of a power electronics device are arranged in spaced, side-by-side relation to one another.
There remains a need for simple and effective structures for cooling of power electronic devices and other heat-generating components arranged in spaced, side-by-side relation to one another.